


Whispers in the Dark

by luckyfilbert



Series: Not With Haste [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 19:32:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1522964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckyfilbert/pseuds/luckyfilbert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every time he closes his eyes it's someone dying with a metal hand on their throat. Or sitting in a dark green room with men taking notes and absolutely nothing, <i>nothing</i> inside him.</p>
<p>This time, though. This time there was a face. A face he has never seen, but is beginning to recognize as Steve.</p>
<hr/><p>In which Bucky settles into his new life and considers where Steve fits in it. Featuring memory flashbacks, bacon sandwiches, and Steve's suicidal tendencies.</p>
<p>Part of a series, but you can read out of order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whispers in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> So this part took forever to get up. I feel like the least motivated of all the poorly motivated. At one point in writing this my brain was like "this is working, this is going really well, I'm on such a roll, I should check tumblr now" and then I did and that was an actual series of decisions my brain made.

Bucky starts awake on the couch. He doesn't spend much time between sleep and waking, but then, he doesn't spend much time in sleep. Every time he closes his eyes it's someone dying with a metal hand on their throat. Or sitting in a dark green room with men taking notes and absolutely nothing, _nothing_ inside him. Or a rubber guard between his teeth, bands on his arms, and vivid pain through his head. 

The last one he likes best, because sometimes there are hazes of memories around it.

This time, though. This time there was a face. A face he has never seen, but is beginning to recognize as Steve. That face and a tight, nauseating fear. 

A noise to his right. He breathes in and out once before turning his head. It's just Natasha, standing with feet planted apart and arms raised, moving her hands slowly through the air. He recognizes the exercise she trained into him in that first month. _Slowly,_ her voice repeated, drawing out the word. _Calmly. Think about just this._

"You were crying," she says now, not breaking her gaze from the middle distance. "Normally you're just screaming."

Bucky lifts his right hand to rub at his face. It's still wet.

"I've gotta see him."

"Okay." She doesn't break her motion. "You might want an umbrella." 

Bucky looks toward the window and the faint susurrations of rain behind it. The shades are drawn, but he can tell there's no light behind them: it's the middle of the night.

"He'll be up," Natasha answers his unasked question.

Bucky pushes the blanket back and stands, wavering, till he catches his breath. Even with Zola's injections, his body needs more sleep than he's able to give it. He grabs a clean shirt from a drawer in the guest room--his room, if he wants it, but it's too small--and changes in the bathroom. Cold water on his face hides the tears somewhat, but he shies away from looking too long in the mirror. 

"Want me to come with?" Natasha asks as he returns.

"I think I can walk down a street, Nat." 

Natasha nods easily, with just enough nonchalance that he knows she'll follow him. "You boys have fun," is all she says, continuing her motion.

He grunts and swings the door shut behind him. And apparently he can't walk down a street, not as well as he thought, because his left hand starts to twitch as soon as he's outside. He's done this walk before, the few quiet blocks to Steve's apartment--to Steve's apartment and past it, when he couldn't think of enough reason to go up--but never in this half-misted dark, with its green shadows and liquid echoes. Street lights glint in shallow puddles, his eyes pick out threat after threat, and he can't just close them like he had at that cafe. That cafe had held too many people in too many corners, and its clatters and shouts, so he had closed his eyes and damn near clung to Steve because Steve was safe. 

That at least is welded into his mind. Steve is safe.

Bucky's breathing is shallow and his vision fuzzing by the time he reaches the apartment. He spends several breaths trying to read Steve's name on the plate and several more wondering if he should ring it, but Natasha is somewhere between him and his couch, and the look on her face. His stomach twists. 

He rings the bell.

Steve's reply comes surprisingly quickly. "Yes?"

"Uh." A few careful breaths to regulate his voice. "Steve. It's me."

"Bucky!" And Bucky's stomach flops again. "C'mon, come on up."

A harsh buzz from the door. Bucky cringes his eyes shut against it and swings the door open on his second try. A long line of stairs stretches ahead of him, but somewhere at the top is Steve, and probably a place to sit. Steady breaths _in, out, in, out,_ and he starts climbing.

It hits halfway up the stairs. Something _thumps_ in the back of Bucky's throat. _Clogging rubber over his mouth, dull purpose in his fingertips._ His feet react, pushing him back; one hand grabs at the rail and his breath comes in quick, wavering jerks. A fuzzy hum like a spent record muffles his ears. Gray clouds over his eyes and cold sweat prickles his palm, his neck; ice-cold weight tenses at his left shoulder. 

He gasps in air. Splinters under his palm. Sharp stairs under his feet. Wrapped in white fog, he is nothing but touch, drawing further away with each echoing breath, each _thump. Thump. Thump._ Too slow. Too fast. 

_"How many people know about--your wife?"_

_"Is that what we are? Friends?"_

_A crash. Blood. Shouts. Footsteps pounding._

Footsteps pounding. The railing vibrates.

A sound swims through, echoes around his head. "Buck!" A grip on his arm, too large, too strong. Air jerks into his lungs. Cotton and graphite. 

He cuts off a gasp and breathes _in, in._

_Out._

The grip adjusts, ushers. _In. Out._ Bucky rocks his legs forward. Trips on a stair. The hand on his arm tenses and holds him upright, swaying, as Bucky breathes carefully and looks with cold cloudy eyes anywhere but Steve.

The fog thins, leaving him muddied and too hot, too cold. Steve's face is too bright, but closing his eyes is worse. "Okay," Steve says quietly, and he feels very very young, "Okay."

They climb slowly up the remaining stairs, Bucky focusing on pulling air into his lungs. Somehow they're at the top, and he leans on the doorframe as Steve pushes open the door. The dark apartment looms gray before him, but Steve grips his arm again and flicks on light, and they're inside, and Steve is leading him to a chair, but Bucky breaks off and down and sits against the wall and leans his head back and _breathes._

Some time later, he notices a glass of water by his right hand. The light around him is still tingling and humming, but when he lifts his hand, it doesn't shake too badly. Bucky wraps his fingers around the cool glass and takes a few sputtering sips.

"I always liked the floor better too." Steve is sitting across from him, knees drawn up. His voice is deliberately casual. "Chairs are too far off the ground. Unstable."

_Close, muggy air. Wavering breaths._

"Bucky?"

"There's a--" He squints, pulling on the memory. _Hot breeze. Sweat on his neck. A thin voice. "I'm okay--I'm OKAY"_ Something else, niggling around the edges of the memory. Fear and guilt and worry and--but then Bucky's breath gives a final judder and his mind is fully back, pushing the memory away, and he's sitting on the floor, useless and cold, limbs weighted with exhaustion. 

"It got away," he grunts into the cup, shifting. Without the cocoon of buzzing grayness around him, the hard wall digs uncomfortably against his spine.

Steve seems to notice. "C'mon." He stands and offers a hand. "I'll get you some food."

* * *

Bucky is still wobbly on his feet, but it feels better than sitting. Stronger. He pads around the apartment as Steve opens cupboards and pulls out bread, a pan, bacon. In some ways--the record player, the warm cream and wood, the desk covered in paper and very slightly different pencils--the apartment is nothing like Natasha's. In others--the open layout, the clear routes between rooms--it's exactly the same. Each seat has an easy view of window and door. Though this chair. . . . Bucky wanders closer to the armchair in the corner.

"Is--this is where I shot Director Fury." 

A pause. The gas burner pops and lights. "Yeah."

"You kept the chair." He runs his fingers over the patched bullet holes in the wall. "You kept the _place._ You could've moved, y'know."

"But I've built so many memories here." Bucky looks up. Steve catches his eye with a grin and goes back to laying strips of bacon into the pan. "The first place I saw you again--how could I leave?" 

"Sentimental git." But Bucky's grinning. He peers at the record player, runs his left forefinger carefully over the grooves. Sips at his water. The smell of bacon wafts up a faint feeling, not quite a memory, of rare warmth and food. 

Steve makes sandwiches, peanut butter and bacon. There are four chairs at the table but Steve sits next to Bucky. "The last time we had this," he says around a bite, "was when you were working for that butcher. And you dropped that side of bacon, do you remember, and he made you buy the whole thing." 

"Spoiled bacon." Buck grins around a bite. "I'm surprised he didn't fire me."

"He did."

Buck laughs.

"But," Steve takes another bite, "we ate meat for a week."

And Bucky smiles at him knocks their knees together under the table and eats with his right hand.

* * *

Later, as Steve cleans up, Bucky spins his empty cup on the table and tries to draw back that memory. The warmth is helping. _Close, muggy air. Urgency. Worry._ And something tighter, right in the center of his chest. Almost--

"Sam offered to help me find a new place," Steve's voice cuts in.

Bucky looks up. Steve's scrubbing the frying pan, casual, but that quirk in his eyebrows matches one in a much younger face. "But I wanted you to be able to find me. That's why--mostly why--I stayed here. The bullet ornamentation was an extra perk." 

Ignoring the crack, Bucky sets aside his glass--and the question of Sam. "Steve." His left arm tenses. "If I'd--if I'd found you, like I was back then. I would have killed you."

A wry smile. "A little credit, Buck. You might've only maimed me."

"Steve."

He shrugs. Rinses the pan. Shakes it off. 

_"Steve."_ Still no response. "So on the helicarrier," he pushes. "I thought you had a _plan,_ I thought you were-- That's what brought me back, seeing-- But you were just _trying to die?"_

Steve dries his hands slowly, eyes on the towel. 

"Listen. Punk." Bucky's voice is firm, shaking. The edge of the table clamped in his hand. "They told me I fell off a train for you. That wasn't--not so you could--"

"Bucky, don't--"

"I am not." The world fuzzes; he takes a deep breath. _A skinny, skinny boy, lips white, arms shaking, "Bucky--"_ "Steve, what if I'd killed you? I am not--you are not going to make me-- _live with that--"_

Finally he puts down the damn towel and turns around. Sighs. "There just--Buck, I didn't want to. Not without you."

"Don't," Bucky hisses. He's out of his chair, leaning forward, glaring through blurred eyes. _Weight in his arms, bird-light, ribs under his fingers._ "That's not--I'm _sorry_ I wasn't here, but that doesn't mean you can--"

"I know." His voice is quiet. "I know. Buck. It was--that was the first time I'd really thought about it. I mean, not--not--you were gone. Right? You were dead. Everyone was, or nearly. So there wasn't much . . . I didn't think about it, I just tried to do my job, do the right thing." He picks at the towel. "But then you _were_ back. And I thought. . . . It was selfish, it was-- _fucking_ stupid, but I didn't. . . ." That set to his jaw. "The right thing would've been to take you out, not risk you being a threat, and save myself, so I could keep going on and on. And on. Doing the right thing. But I was just damn sick of it."

Bucky's anger rises from his gut to clog in his throat instead. "Steve Rogers." He swallows. "Sick of doing the right thing."

"Yeah. Not--what I expected."

"Not in a million years."

"Well." That stupid grin. "Maybe seventy."

Bucky rolls his eyes. "But you're good now, though, right? 'Cause I've got enough problems for both of us."

The pause is longer than Bucky would like.

_"Steve."_

"Why are you here, Buck?"

He blinks at the question. "What?"

"It's--" he looks-- "three in the morning. You pass out at my door. I figured I'd let it slide, but if we're going to talk about this, then." He shrugs. "I--worry, Buck. Haven't seen you in a while."

All those times he walked by without walking up. How many weeks has it been since the cafe? 

"Didn't want to bother you," he mutters.

"Yeah, you did a real good job of that."

Bucky glares at him. "You're a little ruder than my Steve, y'know."

"Stuff happened." But then, "Your Steve? You're remembering?"

"No." Bucky fiddles with the chair back. "A little. I had a--dream. Tonight. Something about you. Figured I should share it, but swooning on your stairs kinda shook it out." He doesn't mention the flickers that have been returning since. Memories through dreams is weird enough; having them triggered by sandwiches and arguments isn't something he wants Steve to know. "Look, I'm--sorry. I'll come by more. I don't want to . . . not see you."

Steve crosses his arms. If he's trying for a captain pose, it's undermined by his hopeful eyes. "You promise?"

Bucky walks forward, pokes his chest. "I promise, if. You promise not to die."

His mouth twists into a smile. "I promise I won't try to."

Buck nods firmly. "Good."

He gives another nod for good measure, then leans against the counter next to Steve, shoulders touching. And standing there, oddly, the final pieces drift calmly into place. Cotton and graphite. "We were on the subway platform," Bucky says slowly. "Going to a museum--one of your artists. You fainted and I caught you." The fear is dimmer now, covered over with relief. "You almost fell on the tracks."

He can feel Steve tilt his head down curiously. "That just came back?"

"Pieces do. Sometimes. Mostly they're--this is the first nice one." He huffs a laugh. "Guess I could've tried for something less embarrassing for you, huh?"

Steve smiles. Bumps against his shoulder. "I like this one."

**Author's Note:**

> I've never had a panic attack, but I do pass out a lot and tried to describe what that feels like. Relatedly: catching people who pass out is very important to me. The only person who's ever caught me is my mom; most times people just stand and watch (once a woman screamed, that was cool; once I fell flat on concrete, that was less cool). If you ever want to make a favorable impression with me, take care of fainting people. You will hold a special place in my heart forever.
> 
> Also! Peanut butter and bacon sandwiches--you probably know them as being Elvis's purported favorite, but apparently they were a big thing in the '40s. I like to think they'd be Steve and Bucky's special treat, to get some extra protein in when they had the money.


End file.
